Rational ideas create hell on earth. Just ask a kulak. Or just ask the lettuce plants in my garden.
I had a great gardening idea a few years ago. I called it “wild gardening.” The idea was simple and based on U.S. foreign policy over the past 75 years.
There’s a war in every garden: good plants versus weeds. I figured I just needed to let the two battle it out, with me getting involved as little as possible. So, even though I wanted the good plants to win, I’d let them fight the weeds, with me offering minimal help, mostly behind the actual battle lines. I’d fight a proxy war.
I would let the good plants (lettuces, cilantro, basil, mustards, and kale) reach full maturation: sprouting fluffy heads of seeds, which would then float all over the garden like parachuters. I kept areas of ground uncovered to receive the vegetable seed parachuters. Meanwhile, I used a diamond hoe to slice weeds before they had much chance to fight back (before they sprouted seeds).
Eventually, I figured I’d have a lawn-like spread of good green vegetables, with the weeds choked out. No mulching. No rows. No spacing. No planting by hand. No buying new seeds every year. No need to harvest seeds every fall (because they’d be reseeding themselves and growing the following spring).
It’d be paradise on my little plot of earth. It was among the best-laid plans.
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Eric Scheske
